


Glimpses of a Cleaner

by Merfilly



Category: Léon | The Professional (1994)
Genre: Other, POV Alternating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-17
Updated: 2015-09-17
Packaged: 2018-04-21 04:39:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4815389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/pseuds/Merfilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mathilda speaks of the past and the present, while other scenes show the past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Glimpses of a Cleaner

**Author's Note:**

  * For [inconspicuouslyblue (bluedreaming)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluedreaming/gifts).



> The choice not to warn is because it is difficult to pin down the exact nature of Mathilda's feelings. Read into it what you will.

_I knew love once. It doesn't matter I was just a kid. Not really. Because it was love. It wasn't a crush or anything like that. And it didn't have anything at all to do with sex or all that mess. What we had was the best thing to ever happen to me. The second best was everything he taught me._

_I had love, even if it wasn't for long, and my heart may never stop breaking because of it._

* * *

Léon looked down at the child he had taken in, the one that blithely trusted him. Not for the first time, he considered the silencer, the easy way to end the misery of her life. He knew nothing of children and even less of girls. No one had come for her; no one had even looked. At least, they hadn't since that first day when the cops had thought about invading his apartment. 

She'd fallen asleep with her head on his thigh, and he didn't remember when that had happened. His hand was on her hair, another moment he could not recall coming to pass. 

He should have killed her that first night, let her join her family in the peace of death. What life could he give her? How could he protect her and still do what he was made for? 

Yet, he thought of the moments like this, the ones that made him feel as if he were more than the gun and the knife. He thought of his pride in watching her train, making herself into something stronger. It wasn't making her more fierce, for fierceness lived like a tiger in her heart. But it was tempering that fire, making it burn with focus.

He moved his hand from her hair, just slightly, and the small noise escaping her made him put it back. He tipped his head back on the couch, ready to sleep right there so that she would have this little peace, this quiet, without disturbance.

* * *

_I ran there in desperation. I didn't even really know what I was doing. His was the only door, though, the only hope in my entire life of survival. I didn't care about anyone in that apartment but my little brother, not really, not right then. He was dead, and they would get away with it, unless I lived._

_So I went to that door, and I prayed. I didn't know I was going to fall into him. Not like that. I was too scared, too shaken, because my little brother was dead inside my apartment and I probably should have been dead too._

* * *

Tony knew the kid was bad luck the minute he saw her. What was worse was that Léon was totally screwed up over her. Kid was below jail bait, so what the hell even was this?

"Léon," Tony began. "This is going to major-league blow up, if you keep that kid around."

Léon just looked at him, over the rim of the glasses he had put back on, since the deal was already decided. "Mathilda is like me. She stays." There were concepts there that Tony could see, but he was betting the marksman couldn't even find the words for them. Tony pushed back from the table, washing his hands clean of whatever happened to Léon because of the brat.

* * *

_I knew he was different, magical even. He didn't get a lot of things about life, didn't see the truth of what we were. We were meant to be together, probably had touched fate the day he stopped and saw the bruises. I'm older now, and maybe people think I should be over him, but they can't ever understand. Léon needed me as much as I needed him._

_He taught me my skills, you see, because they were his skills. I taught him mine, because no one ever had. Léon may have been different in all the ways that other people call stupid, or slow, but he just needed someone who knew how to teach him in a way he could learn._

* * *

Léon shook his head slowly, then looked at Mathilda, not knowing how clearly his worry over disappointing her was written on his features. "I cannot read it," he told her in his slow, measured way. She smiled at him, gentle and reassuring, and he felt the worry, the anxiety that was so foreign to his simpler way of life, melting away.

"That's okay; I can read it with you," she said, taking the paper from him so that she could plant herself in his space. It felt awkward as she settled in his chair, even as he shifted so that she had more of the seat than he did, but then she was talking, going slow, so that Léon's eyes could follow the letters to match her words.

"Why does the 'g' and the 'h' make a sound like the 'f'?" he asked her when she finished. 

"Probably because some guy a long time ago thought it would be funny to make people try to say 'guh-huh' when they were learning how to read," Mathilda answered him before giggling. "Okay, your turn. I read it once; you read it to me now," she said, settling so that he was holding the paper alone, and her head was resting on his chest.

Léon, despite the awkward angle of his arm, started at the beginning, and read for her. It was hard work, but he demanded hard work from her during her training. This was one more part of being fair to the girl he had saved.

* * *

_What do I miss most, other than Léon himself? The shared work. I loved training, but when he started taking me on jobs, that's when I felt like it all paid off. Yeah, I still wanted to grease the scumbags that killed my little brother, but there was something about taking out these lowlifes who were poisoning the neighborhoods that made me feel good with what I was doing. I'd get the bastard that shot my baby brother, but I'd do it after I'd stopped the coke and meth and heroin in those apartments from hitting the streets._

_'No women, no children' was our motto, the rules we had agreed on. It didn't take much to make Léon see that leaving the merch untouched was just like taking a bullet to the kids on the street corners, like knifing the women who used it to make bad lives a little better for a minute, only to be a slave to it._

_So yeah, I miss the joy of working with him, knowing I was doing good then. Now? Well, I am the best at what I do; I just don't usually target the pushers like we did then._

* * *

"Léon, you have to let me start sometime," Mathilda complained, holding her training weapon steady on the mark.

"Yes. Not today. Do as told," he said firmly, and she demonstrated proper technique before walking away. The mark's jeans were soaked from his bladder cutting out, but he didn't have to worry about that much longer as Léon finished the job, his shots going exactly where Mathilda's paint smears had hit. 

She was as gifted in this as in her awareness of the little details in life. Maybe Léon should have realized how much trouble she was when she'd rattled off his preference for buying two cartons of milk at him before running down to the store. Except, for all the trouble, Léon had come to a point where he would not part with her in his life. Her well-being was as important to him as maintaining his skills, or caring for his plant.

"Next time, Léon, I carry the nine," she said as he joined her at the work table, killing thousands of dollars of merchandise swiftly.

He considered; she hadn't made a mistake in five hits. They had a smooth operation. He felt a half-worry over her age; he knew that if she started this young, she truly never would leave the life. His father had taught him basic skills before coming to America, but not let him work until he'd come, fleeing what he had done sloppily, in revenge.

"Okay."

If he let her start now, perhaps the thirst for revenge would taper off, distracted by the work they did.

"Okay," she parroted back at him, but her face was aglow with her joy.

* * *

_Why did I lose Léon? Because I listened to him that day? Because …._

_No. I lost him because I was **stupid**. I should have trusted Léon. I should have waited until he was ready. He loved me. He was going to do it. But I screwed up his time-table. I got Léon killed._

_It's my own damn fault I'll live all my life with this hole where my heart was._

_I killed Léon the minute I went in that federal building, and I know it._

* * *

Léon was never a stupid man. Tactical situations were things he lived and breathed as naturally as others managed to drive or navigate the subway tunnels. From the minute he was aware things were wrong, his brain had engaged at the pinnacle of its ability, contemplating every in and out of the situation.

Mathilda must live.

That he was abridging his own chances for survival was clear to him. That he could not just escape and let her fall in the aftermath was a rock-hard truth of his very existence.

Mathilda would not only live, but she would have his money, held in safe-keeping by Tony. Tony would not betray his wishes in this.

There was desperation, just as their relationship had been borne under, as he got her free of the armed minions of their menace. He took the only way he knew to give her that chance to live, at the cost of his own ability to get free fast enough to survive.

"No, Léon!" echoed in his heart, but he made her go, made her leave his side, trusting in her own skill to see her the rest of the way out.

And then, not wishing to disappoint her, Léon cut loose. All of his skill with weapons, his knowledge of survival, and his guile in taking advantage of the illusions people kept for their worlds came into play.

He almost made it.

At least he could die with the happiness that Mathilda's contract was finished, as he handed Stansfield the ring, wishing he'd lived long enough to see the greatness that Mathilda would be.

* * *

_Léon told me once that revenge was a very bad thing. He was right, you know? I made sure every single bastard that worked for Stansfield was really dead._

_It didn't bring back Léon. It didn't make the image of my brother's outline disappear from my dreams. It just added to the hole in my chest, the one where my heart had been. The one that was carved in full the day Stansfield went to war against me and the man I loved._

_I have done something with it. I had a long talk with Tony, a few years later. His guilt got the better of him, or maybe it was the fact he was sitting in a chair I'd wired to go off if he made any sudden moves. I gave him my forgiveness, though. They'd had the kids as leverage over him._

_I only broke his nose to get his attention before I forgave him._

_Then I took all the rest of the money, all of Léon's gear that Tony still had, and I've used it. I loved a man once, and he loved me. So what he did give me wasn't a kid or anything messy like sex._

_It was skill, and a sense of knowing when and how to use it best. He cleaned. He was a damn good cleaner. I clean too._

_I just happen to clean the cesspools of government and law enforcement, because I never got to clean up my own mess, and it got my love killed._


End file.
